


the carpenter's here to show you to your coffin

by Theboys



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, M/M, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 20:56:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11997810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theboys/pseuds/Theboys
Summary: “I let him out. I got to put him back in.”Dean laughs, silent. “Okay. That’s it, then.”Dean's on the run, and he's not alone.





	the carpenter's here to show you to your coffin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hellhoundsprey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellhoundsprey/gifts).



> i have not published anything sam/dean since MARCH?? and y'all let me do this?  
> this is for my vanilla bean, she gets my small hand kink and APPRECIATES IT (and i'm sorry there isn't more porn, but there was a story here that needed telling and it WOULD NOT LET ME GO, even in the fucking woods) and she hasn't had anything from me in FAR TOO LONG. sorry bout the neglect.
> 
> this takes place during season five, and diverges from canon following that.

It’s almost unmanageable, when it comes down to it.

It’s been meticulously planned, practically since the onset of the news, but Dean almost can’t pull it off.

Children are unpredictable. No survival instinct.

There’s one large backpack, meant for camping. They can’t afford to carry much more than that, and having clean clothes every day is a luxury one quickly learns to live without.

There’s mostly foodstuffs and water, an inordinate amount of sun-dried tomatoes because he won't go anywhere without them clutched in one fist, tongue red and salty.

Dean packs fourteen bottles of water, astounded by the uncomfortable way the weight distributes.

The boy carries a smaller backpack, a relic of days behind. There are four cartoon wolves on the vinyl, teeth bared in an animated approximation of a smile.

It's dirtied with rust and earth, and the boy sniffs at it, hounds his way to the core of the scent.

“It don't smell right,” he says, mouth curled. Petulant to the last.

“Doesn't,” Dean says absently, tucks blond underneath a Spurs cap. It's too big for his head.

The boy shoves the brim up just a bit in order to meet Dean’s eyes.

His own are the color of marbles, the edge of the earth on the cusp of the Great Flood. His lashes are longer than Dean cares to deal with.

“It doesn't smell new,” the boy amends, one sticky fist by his side.

“Don't matter,” Dean says, takes an elongated peek at the horizon. Dawn is approaching.

“Doesn't,” the boy corrects, brows furrowed. He swings his arms open and Dean squats in order to lift.

-

They surface in Braintree. He hasn’t been this far north in years, five, to be exact, and certainly not with a kid in tow.

The boy grips tightly to his fingers, an uncommon occurrence, considering the independent slant of his personality.

“Where are we?” He asks, leaning his head back in order to better meet Dean’s eyes.

Dean spares them a glance, hitching the pack higher on his shoulders. They’ll need to stop and eat soon.

“Near Boston,” he says, considers swinging the boy into his arms. It’ll make walking faster.

“Where near Boston?”

Dean hisses, a not quite silent sound. Small fingers tighten and then release in order to tug on Dean’s pants leg.

“Braintree.”

There’s no reply from his small companion, and Dean casts a worried glance down. Children are fleeting. He remembers how quickly they end up underfoot.

“That’s the Town Hall,” Dean says, pointing to his left, as unhelpful as it is to his cause.

“Pick me up, please,” he asks, unfailingly polite. Dean does as requested, hitching boy and bookbag onto his right hip.

His Converse are untied. They’re new, recently stained by travel and stone.

Dean fingers the laces, the aglet.

“Presidents lived here,” the kid says, mouth pinched. Pink.

Dean’s still walking, briskly. The plantation-esque structure is fading behind them. Dean grunts as compact hands land on his shoulders, twisting in his grip to peek at history.

“They--They moved away when they was old. To Boston,” he continues, sneakers clipping the uppermost portion of Dean’s thighs.

“Are you listening?” Sticky fingers in Dean’s hair, a punishing grip of another nature entirely.

“Papa. Are you listening?”

-

Boston was only partially damaged.

It’s been quickly rebuilt, with major metropolitan areas still mostly intact. They take the Red Line out of Braintree, just past Quincy Center.

Dean arranges him on his lap, legs splayed, parentheses around Dean’s knees.

The crush of the kid’s backpack against his chest is uncomfortable at best, unforgiving fabric and three separate zippers that hold the most prized possessions Dean could think to bring along.

The boy’s swinging his legs, clipclip of Dean’s shins.

Dean’s hand rests against the soft swell of little-child stomach, patting out a bastard-beat. Going to California.

“By His Name, aren’t you the cutest little thing!”

The voice is disembodied, and if the kid can feel the sharp stiffening of Dean’s thighs, he makes no mention of it, only turns away from the whiplash of color leaking from the train window.

“Hello,” he says cautiously, and winces when Dean’s hand turns to a vice, a spider hooked into the flesh of his stomach.

The woman is seated on Dean’s left, one hand holding her purse protectively on her lap. She smells like Marlboro. Not quite unpleasantly, Dean thinks. There might be a bit of gunsmoke in her too, if Dean were to scent hard enough.

He bounces the kid on his thighs, just the once. The boy curls one hand around two of the fingers that make up Dean’s possessive sprawl.

“What’s his name?” The woman continues, either oblivious or uncaring about the vast amount of standoffishness that Dean is projecting.

Dean doesn’t want to answer. He doesn’t really want to provide her with more than this iota of his attention.

“I’m Zac,” Zac chirps, and then he waves Dean’s hand, the same one he’s holding tight to. “This is my Papa. His name’s Dean.”

Zac is smiling, a mouth full of perfectly straight teeth. He shoves back into Dean’s hold.

The woman’s grin is wider, if at all possible.

“Well. Don’t you look just like your Papa, huh?” The woman is salivating. There’s an invite in there, somewhere, but Dean wouldn’t remember the instructions on how to reply, even if he wanted to.

“Zac. Be still,” Dean admonishes, and the boy settles, stretching a bit to catch glimpses of the terrain once more.

“Of course I do,” Zac says imperiously, facing away from the questioner.

In Dean’s most uncharitable moments, his most frightening, he thinks Zac may never look like him at all.

-

Dean’s brother’s legs are long.

They’re brackets around his own, pressing him down into unforgiving cotton.

Dean winces at the catch of shin against ankle, and Sam draws back, huffs out a laugh.

“Why’ve you got so much energy,” Sam says, and Dean undulates against him, shamed at the tail end. He’s arched like a gift, and Sam’s palm closes down on his hip, rubs whorls into the divot leading to his spine.

“Restless,” he says, and Sam smiles without looking down. His head is supported by Dean’s scalp, and everything itches.

His blood’s too tight in his skin.

“There’s nothing to be done,” Sam reminds him, good humor leaching out, pooling in the air between them.

“I won’t wait for them,” Dean says, and he’s this close to snarling it, but Sam’s hand shifts, minutely, mind you; Sam’s got a great range for subtlety, and it’s pressing Dean into the bed.

“We’re not waiting for them.”

Dean laughs, but it doesn’t sound like anything less than a groan.

“Funny. We got two different interpretations of the word,” he says, and he makes to move, drags both legs from underneath the smolder of Sam’s skin.

Sam locks him in, and the palm that’s been keeping him motionless becomes a bruise.

“What do you suggest we do, then, huh?” Dean’s angry now, body rebelling. “I’m not sitting here til they decide they’re just gonna--just gonna fuckin’ figure out how to drag your fucking soul outta your body.”

Dean’s chest is heaving. He’s sweating. It’s clammy, touched to his chin. His eyelids.

Sam’s free hand drags down the swell of his lower lip, catches on the shine.

“We’re not waiting,” Sam repeats, infuriatingly calm, eyes obscured by hair. He’s shirtless, clothing lost somewhere to the foot of the bed.

Dean can’t find it in himself to argue anymore.

Sam is wearing him down.

-

Dean hasn’t lived like this in years.

_Five_

His mind supplies, ever cognizant.

Zac climbs onto the center of the bed almost immediately, bouncing up once before settling. He allows Dean to remove his bookbag, and laughs once when Dean tickles his belly in order to force him to get situated on his butt.

“Papa,” Zac says, almost clipping Dean in the chin with one black Converse.

“Hmm,” Dean says, peeling off both shoe and sock in one motion. He runs his thumb over the pad of Zac’s foot, the same as he’s been doing all his life.

Zac giggles again, lurching away.

“Papa, stop!” He yells, and Dean’s suddenly terrified, an age-old cocktail of horror. He clamps right on down over Zac’s ankle, and it doesn’t help. Not a fraction, not to feel the small tangle of bones under his son’s skin.

Zac wiggles his foot impatiently, and Dean focuses on the give, doesn’t meet his eyes.

“Three bones in here,” Dean says, and it comes out exhausted. Zac’s not paying attention. Can’t understand the cost.

Dean swirls his thumb around the ankle just to watch Zac’s mouth quirk.

“I _know,_ ” Zac says, interlacing small fingers over top Dean’s. They’re almost translucent, he thinks, wildly.

“Tibia,” Zac points, “Fib-u-ra,” he enunciates, and then he curls the whole of his hand around his heel, tongue poking out through milk-teeth.

“Talus,” he finishes, leaning back on both palms.

“Other shoe now, Papa,” Zac says, shaking the appendage.

“Fibula,” Dean says, placing the other shoe next to the first.

“Okay,” Zac says brightly, and he’s been still long enough. He wrestles his own shirt off and then his pants, and Dean’s heart hammers awayawayaway in his chest.

His blond hair is everywhere, sticking up in unmanageable spikes. It’s getting long. Longer than Dean’s ever survived.

He’ll need a haircut soon.

“Papa,” Zac says, in that increasingly shrill way that means he’s been whining for Dean for longer than he finds acceptable.

“Did you pack jammies?” Zac asks, curling his arms around goosebumped flesh.

Dean picks him up immediately, stumbles over his own boots, scuffed at the toes.

Zac curls into his neck, uncharacteristically clingy.

“Do you. Do you want Batman or X-Men,” Dean whispers, and Zac snuffles into his neck. His hair still smells like raspberries. They’ll need shampoo, then.

“Did you bring Fessor X,” Zac mumbles, and Dean laughs, a bit wetly.

“I did.”

“I want him, then,” Zac says, voice rippling through lucidity and sleep.

Dean wants him to explain, wants his son to tell him once more why the Professor is his favorite, but he already knows.

Once, ages ago, She’d asked him. Raven hair.

“Batman has both of his legs, though,” she says, one hand balanced on Zac’s head. She’s measuring him against the doorpost, and Dean’s barely clinging to his anger.

He’ll burn her to the ground, as soon as she’s finished touching his child.

“The Fessor can see inside your head,” Zac says reasonably, while he attempts to add inches to his height by standing on tiptoe.

“Flat feet, bean,” she murmurs, eyes shuddering once, too quickly for Zac to notice, and he wouldn’t know what to make of it, if he did.

“What’s the point of legs,” Zac says contemptuously, “if you still can’t get away?”

This is the first time.

-

Sam fucks like he’s got nothing to lose, and everything to prove.

He always has.

He bends Dean double after Iowa, whispers, “three down, brother,” hushed and hot against the shell of his earlobe.

Dean makes for a response, something humorous like, “is now really the time,” but Sam’s already loosened him up on spit and promise, digs five fingers into the swell of his cheek and nudges his dick right up in there, head caught snug.

Dean scrambles away from the intrusion, but then folds himself backwards, prey.

Sam makes a sound that’s mostly a laugh, half death, and Dean’s body shudders toward release.

“Push back,” Sam whispers, voice no more than a breath.

“C’mon, now. Split yourself open on it,” Sam encourages, voice thick and dry with want. It’s diseased, is what Dean thinks, this wild, nasty, insatiable thing that writhes between them.

Dean can’t much breathe, air stuttering out through a mostly clogged throat.

Sam moves one hand to the base of his skull and jerks backwards. Dean’s arms give out, and he’s hung in horrified suspended animation before Sam allows him to fall face-first onto the comforter.

Sam uses the new leverage to do what Dean couldn’t.

Dean takes every inch, bone-deep and slick, and it takes him most of the fuck to realize it’s him crying.

-

There’s one bed.

Dean’s face twists at the remembrance, the knee jerk of his mouth to ask for a Queen.

Zac is curled up, lying mostly on his chest, and Dean resists the very real urge to swallow his child whole.

Every exhalation he makes ruffles his son’s hair, and he presses a kiss to the crown of his head. His eyes are wet before he can fully return to consciousness, and Dean watches two tears slither down the slope of his nose.

The hand he places on Zac’s scalp is trembling, at best, and he knows he’s got about three minutes before his kid wakes up.

Less than that, even, it seems, when Zac lurches upright, face pale.

“Baby?” Dean says, catches the boy around his hips. His stomach pokes out with child-fat, and it’s strange, that he often sees Zac as something to be protected, but never as fragile.

Zac throws both arms around his neck and doesn’t bother holding back a shudder.

“W-what, w-was that,” he breathes, and he’s _crying_

Dean swings him up entirely, and Zac goes along, latches the knobs of his ankles around Dean’s back.

“Papa,” he says, and he’s working himself up to a frenzy.

“Breathe for me, sweetheart,” Dean soothes, one hand winding in circles on Zac’s back.

“I can hear it,” Zac says, “right here, right in my head.”

Dean’s hand grips too tightly, and he knows his son can feel the shift.

It’s time to go.

-

When it’s late, and Zac is hushed, making small whimpers in his sleep, Dean remembers what Pestilence’s finger looked like, severed from the life of his body.

He can see the ring in his mind’s eye, formless, burnt to the touch.

Zac shuffles beside him, and Dean counts the water-leaks in the ceiling. It’s raining outside, and Zac reaches out for him in sleep.

Dean pulls him in securely, wary of waking the kid. His hand spans the entirety of his back, and he’s filled with the sudden urge to laugh, high and long.

 _Breakfast at Death’s,_ he thinks, hysterical.

It’s all very black and white.

-

“I’ll back your play,” Dean says, head tilted to the sky. Beer’s chilled to his hand. It’s a bit much.

“You’re gonna let me say yes?” Sam looks incredulous, eyes shifting to meet Dean’s gaze.

Dean’s spine cracks in sympathy, or maybe rebellion.

The rings have coalesced, waiting to open the End of All Things. He twitches on the hood of the Impala, sliding on the fray.

“If this is what you want. Is this what you really want?” Dean says, sucks in all of his air, chokes on hops, prays Sam replies in the negative.

Sam doesn’t waste a breath. Makes steady eye contact and grips his untouched beer.

“I let him out. I got to put him back in.”

Dean laughs, silent.

“Okay. That’s it, then.”

-

It’s a twelve hour drive from New York to Michigan.

Zac wants to spend every second of it sightseeing, as if he hasn’t been taken on grand tours around the States before.

It’s a new adventure, this time, because they’re alone.

Dean’s fingers flex around the wheel, a Jeep Compass, or something moderately sturdy and unoriginal.

It’s black, and it’s decently fast. They’ll probably need to switch vehicles midway.

Zac’s shoes are cleaner, scrubbed with a to-go pack of Clorox wipes that he’d knicked from the gas station forty miles back.

Zac twisted in his seat belt, nose pressed to glass.

There’s no one on the road this early, but it’s gonna get crowded. There’s no way to avoid major thoroughfares and still make it to the city in time.

“Can we stop f-for more comics, Papa?” Zac asks, not bothering to turn and face Dean.

“Maybe in a few hours. Sit down and get your seatbelt on right,” he admonishes, and Zac makes an annoyed sound.

“I can’t _see_ then, Papa,” he says, twisting his neck to meet Dean’s half-amused gaze.

“Hold on, then,” Dean says, pulling over to the side of the road. He flicks his hazards on and steps out onto gravel. He opens the backseat and growls in the back of his throat when he hears Zac’s seatbelt come undone.

“You stay in that car, Zac,” he says, and Zac settles, chastened. Dean bundles up two pairs of his jeans and one of Zac’s sweatshirts, the thickest things he’s managed to pack.

It’s gonna be cold when they arrive, and he thinks he saw a blanket in the car when he was rummaging through it earlier.

“Scoot on over,” he says, opening the passenger door.

Zac obliges, scrambling his small frame closer to the gear shift.

Dean makes a makeshift pillow out of their belongings, and picks his son up, settling him down on the bulk.

Zac makes a face at the way the denim digs into his backside, but now he’s higher up, and can sit relatively safely and still see his surroundings.

“Thank you, Papa,” he says, and he smashes Dean’s cheeks in between sweaty palms and drags Dean’s face forward for a kiss.

Dean grins through it, and cups Zac’s skull in one palm before buckling him back in.

“On your butt,” he says, and the door shuts behind him.

-

The nightmares begin in Jefferson County.

The door is barricaded with all the salt Dean could steal, which is, through years of practice, quite a bit.

Zac’s body shivers once.

Dean’s eyes are sightless.

The hole is yawning, and Dean can still feel the phantom ache of the rings on bare flesh.

_Open the mouth of the cave to the wicked_

Sam’s body is pulled, and his eyes are almost black, obsidian encroaching on every blank-space.

Dean can’t take back his absolution.

_Promise you won’t try and bring me back_

Dean’s hands are tied, and his watches the cavern of his brother’s mouth.

_I can feel him--oh God--_

When Dean wakes, the every bulb in the room is shattered.

Zac remains tucked underneath his arm.

-

Zac is three years old when Detroit is leveled to the ground, once more.

Dean didn’t think there was anything else to demolish, and he says as much, parked in the high backed armchair in their rooms.

Zac’s speaking in mostly full sentences, and he’s already been tested. Dean’s sort of morbidly proud of how smart his kid is.

Dean leans down to pick him up, settles him in the cradle of his lap. Zac likes dried fruits, and even though Dean privately thinks they’re probably just as bad as candy, there’s no shortage of them now that the kid has expressed interest.

“Daddy,” Zac says, and Dean looks above his son’s head, raises his brows.

-

“I was just messing with you,” Lucifer says, “Sammy’s long gone.”

Dean doesn’t have anything to say--doesn’t know how to _say_

When Lucifer strides a bit closer, spine unnaturally stiff, robotic, trying to learn the controls.

“I told you,” Lucifer continues, holding Sam’s body with a looseness that belies the possession. Sam’s body was a weapon. He never held it exposed.

“This would always happen in Detroit.”

The rings are gone. Dean can’t see.

-

They stop at Carol and Jones, close to Cleveland, and Zac grabs at Dean’s index and middle so tightly that he’s in actual fear that they might break off in the kid’s grasp.

“Are we close to meeting Daddy,” Zac asks, once the bell jingles over the entryway.

Dean’s neck bows, whip-snap of motion.

Zac’s been decent about following Dean’s command. The most important, in fact. He doesn’t mention his Father.

“Soon, little man. Remember what I told you,” Dean says, and he tightens his grip on Zac’s hand, as if that’ll solidify the claim.

“It has to be soon,” Zac says seriously, tugging on Dean’s pants leg so that he can be lifted. Dean does so, angling him so that he can see the row of comics he couldn’t before reach.

“Daddy’ll read the new ones to me, ‘fore bed,” Zac chatters, and Dean’s chest closes up on him, forcing his air out in a cough.

“You okay, Papa?” Zac asks, twisting in his grasp. “Take a big breath,” he commands, and if Dean sounds like he’s laughing, that’s about right.

-

There’s a certain poetry to meeting in a cemetery, and Dean’s fairly sure it’s one only the Devil can enjoy.

They’re a handful of miles out from Dean’s birthplace, and the sickness roils through his gut.

His brother’s not coming back from this one.

Dean thinks about a ranch-style home, steady income and a six pack of Fat Tire in his fridge, at his needy disposal.

The door on that shuts with a finality that impresses him.

They’re not fast enough.

Not that Dean expected to be. He never is. Not for Sam. Not when it counts. He can see the blade sinking into his brother’s lumbar, again and again and again.

It plays in Technicolor on his worst days, and now there’s new life in the air. It’s suffocation.

It all happens very quickly after that.

Dean’s wearing Castiel before he can blink, blood splatter, brain matter, the tattered remains of beige floating away on a non-existent wind. Dean can taste him, ash and raw skin, thick on his tongue. The urge to vomit is volatile.

“I think here’s just fine,” Lucifer says, but that’s not.

Dean drags himself to his knees, ducks his head to look for Michael’s return but there’s just the Devil and His Brother, but those are Sam’s eyes, flicking like a movie reel, hazel, gold and black, too quickly to catch any one still.

“Seems to me,” Sam says, and it is Sam, _it is,_ “the Cage is too good for you.”

Dean scrambles backwards in the grass, face stinging from the wind on fresh wounds, lacerations carved into his bones.

There’s a roar, something like a lion and the horror of a demon, a thousand demons, a _legion_

And Dean sees the key, pulled from Sam’s pocket, but they dissolve, back into four, and the chasm beneath the earth closes, ripped from existence with a bang that sends Dean’s body flying, smashing sideways into the Impala itself.

“Sam! Fucking--Sam, can you fucking hear me?!” It’s cacophonous, but whatever power is in the air won’t allow Dean to stand, but he presses forward anyway, head bowed against the onslaught, in a crouch.

He glances up long enough, watches his brother slide every ring onto his hand, two on each, and he saves Death for last, hooks it around his thumb.

Dean opens his mouth again, but Sam looks at him, quick but somehow not fleeting.

_Not now, brother._

Dean’s voice recedes and Sam smiles, even though Dean is watching, and he can see _something,_ bulging from his brother’s center.

It sends Sam’s body into paroxysms, his lean frame lurching against air and earth.

Dean cannot look away, anymore than he can speak.

Sam’s face twists, pink flesh fading to black, and boils break out, instantaneous, covering every exposed inch of his skin.

It’s sickening to watch, and Dean sobbing, every gasp of air hard-fought.

Dean hears the crunch of bone first, as if every vertebrae in his brother is snapping, folding in, the give of the center.

Sam’s arms fold in, knees lock like a marionette, but his brother does not go down, even as his fingers twist in on themselves, breaking in the most grotesque manner, an obvious effort to free them of the rings.

Sam’s wrists snap, bent double, and Dean vomits now, emesis of Castiel, yellow-bile swimming before his compromised vision.

_Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.*_

Dean hears the words as intimately as if they’re spoken directly into his brain, carved directly into his soul.

Something screams, and it’s a surprisingly human sound, all things considered. Everything pauses, an infinitesimal amount of time, suspended animation.

The wind pauses in transit, holds Sam’s hair in a crown above his head. His body is disfigured, but there’s no blood in sight, as if he hasn’t any to shed.

Nothing happens for a long moment.

And then the world snaps.

-

There is no surprise when Zac is born.

They have not used condoms in months, not since it was determined that one or both of them was to die in Armageddon. What’s the fear of anything, when there’s already a grand finale lined up?

Of course, being Sam, his brother studies, and survives.

-

They reach Detroit at dawn.

Zac is holding tightly to his comics, money that Dean can’t afford, because anything he might have once used is back home, home, being a relative phrase. It’s no longer his.

They’re shrink-wrapped, as Zac won’t open them until his Father comes.

There’s no way to tell him that will never happen. Only over Dean’s dead body, and he’ll take Zac with him, if it comes down to that.

A chill runs down his spine, cooling in the sweat pooled at the small of his back.

_You would do that? You would murder your own son?_

He laughs, his words reflective.

They’ve been through four vehicles. This is the last. It’s a sedan. A Nissan Altima. It was once white but now it’s brown, very nearly black, with the road.

Zac is asleep.

Dean likes to hope he’ll remain that way for the whole thing.

-

There’s nothing left of this place.

There’s a crater where Ford Field should be, and everything that was once standing is decimated, sank into the crevice of the earth with ash and rage.

Dean walks into the heart of the city. There are no roads remaining on which to drive, and Zac’s arms are tangled loosely around his neck.

He knows he’s close when he feels the flutter against his mind, a whisper.

He turns his head to the sky, just once, and when he looks down again, he catches the brown head, bowed, as the angel dusts off imaginary debris.

“Hello,” Castiel says, head cocked to the side.

“It has been some time since we’ve last spoken.” Castiel’s voice is not over loud, but it isn’t soft either, and Zac stirs, restless.

“It’s time,” Dean says wearily, one forearm braced underneath Zac’s bottom, the other cradling his son’s face to his neck.

“We’ve traveled for five days.”

Castiel’s brow furrows. “I am not..unwilling,” he begins, “as I once promised you this very thing.”

Castiel rubs his hands together, an unconscious habit, Dean assumes, from his vessel.

“My only regret is what happens after,” Dean says, and he removes one hand in order to rest it on Castiel’s shoulder.

“There’s no other choice. And we’re out of time.”

Castiel looks at him strangely, as if he’s seeing the whole span of time in a glance, and Dean meets his gaze head-on. There’s nothing yet he hasn’t seen. And anything worse than that is not his to hold.

Zac wakes fully then, instant, unnatural.

He twists in Dean’s arms, his eyes bright and aware after seven hours of uninterrupted sleep.

“Who are you.” He says this flatly, and Dean feels a flare of panic rise, and his hands tighten, painfully.

“Zac--”

“I don’t want you here.” Zac is squirming outright, and Castiel’s gaze flits from father to son, blank and impassive.

“I am an old friend of your father’s,” Castiel says, once it’s apparent that Dean cannot respond, too focused on maintaining his grip on his child.

Zac’s eyes are still sharp, blue-gold, and Dean can see that they need to act.

“No more, Cas,” he says, desperate. “Do it. Do it now.”

Castiel raises one hand, and the earth beneath begins to tremble.

“What’s your name?” Zac asks, and Dean’s frantic, bereft.

“Castiel,” the angel says, bound by his servitude to God’s creation, somehow tangled in his devotion to Dean.

“My name is Zac. You know my Papa. He’s Dean,” Zac says, scrubbing one delicate hand over Dean’s stubble.

“Zac. Zac,” Dean says, helpless, and Castiel is listening, animated.

“Do you want to meet my Daddy?” Zac says, and he smiles, too many teeth in his shark-mouth.

“His name is Sam.”

Dean bows at the waist, screams internally for Cas to _run, leave this place, leave your vessel, this earth_

But he understands. He was wrong before.

Now, they have no time.

-

The first thing Sam says, when he rises from the ash of Stull, hair slicked back from his face, dressed in the cream Dean hoped he’d live to forget, is:

“Didn’t I tell you not to come after me?”

The voice is fond.

The metal is cool against Dean’s skin.

-

Sam is there in a shutter of an eye, pristine, dressed in black from head to toe. Nothing of dirt clings to him, and his hands are positioned behind his back.

Dean knows he’s brought his legionnaires, millions of them, as if they’re headed out for battle.

Not when Sam’s made all of that obsolete.

Castiel is still there, a martyr and a fool, but his hand drops, and when he smiles down at Zac, it’s kind.

“I am sorry, Dean,” Cas says, mouth downturned.

“I would think the Host would be glad to see me go,” he adds, and Sam flicks one finger out, a sharp jerk of movement that sends Cas’ essence burning through the cavern of his eyes, charred to dust within.

Dean jerks Zac away at the last instant, but he’s already trying to get down, besides.

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” he calls, and Dean keeps a firm hold on him.

“You can’t have him,” Dean says, world-weary. He’s never, not once, felt exhaustion like this.

Sam is unsmiling, not that Dean’s particularly surprised.

“Did you think I wouldn’t find you?” He asks, striding ever closer to their child.

“That I wouldn’t rip the world apart, to get to you both?”

Sam is quiet, unhurried, and confused.

“I had no doubts, Sammy,” Dean says, and he rests his cheek against Zac’s head. His son is seemingly content, now that Sam is within reach.

“I figured I would give us a head start. If we got here first, wouldn’t matter how quick you were following.” Dean’s can feel the dull give of the blade in his pocket. It’s less than ideal, but if this is the end, so be it.

“Why did you run?” Sam asks, and he’s close enough to touch, to smell. Dean’s body leans toward safety, toward home, and it takes a considerable amount of effort to take a step back.

  
“You can’t--even you. You can’t be insane enough to think.” Dean’s chest shudders. He’s going to weep.

“I won’t let you touch a fucking. A fucking hair on his head,” Dean hisses, and Zac provides him with his full attention at the venom in his tone.

Sam’s attention is split between father and son, and he smiles, suddenly, a familiar, hateful thing.

“Dean.”

Dean loosens one hand and dives into his pocket. He doesn’t care if Sam sees. Nothing is nothing.

“Didn’t you read the story?” Sam says, and his hand comes up to cup Dean’s cheek, living iron against flesh and bone.

He steps back, and Zac accidentally knees him in the hamstring in an effort to get down.

Sam drops to his knees and opens his arms,  heedless of the dust, of his own decay.

“Sweetheart,” Sam says, mouth wide.

“Isaac. Daddy missed you."  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.  
> (Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us).
> 
> \--taken from Latin Mass


End file.
